Poetics of Disintegration in Laure`s “Poems before the

Transcription

Epiphany: Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011
ISSN 1840-3719
Poetics of Disintegration in Laure’s “Poems before the
summer of 1936”
Barbara Ann Brown
Abstract
This article examines issues of grammatical gender and symbol in the poetry of Colette
Laure Lucienne Peignot. I have focused on the poetics of disintegration in the section
entitled “Poems before the summer of 1936,” in which we encounter a number of poems
written in free verse that reflect different aspects of Laure‟s notion of the poetic sacred.
The poetic sacred, for Laure, relates to the moment when the eternal part of a human
being becomes actualized via the engagement of fulfilling a goal while simultaneously
being aware of the “weight of death.” For Laure, if a person cannot or can no longer
experience this emotion, then the person‟s life is deprived of meaning, deprived of the
sacred. Many of the poems in “Poems before the summer of 1936” recount journeys that
the speaker, or statement subject “I,” embarks upon. Great attention is paid to the
grammatical gender of the statement subjects in these poems, although, at times,
grammatical gender can be difficult to determine. Sometimes grammatical gender can
be discerned in the past tense forms of verbs in the French language, and other times it
can be determined by Laure‟s use of masculine or feminine rhymes in her work. But
often, Laure conceals the gender of her statement subjects, choosing instead to focus on
represent a rejection of traditional gender roles in her poetry. Ultimately, this article
seeks to posit Laure among France‟s best known writers and thinkers in the early part of
the twentieth century, to help close the huge gap in the canon left by the absence of
women writers and thinkers between the years 1880-1930.
Keywords: communism, feminism, grammatical gender, French poetry and poetics.
Corresponding author: Barbara Ann Brown; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, International University of
Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Poetics of Disintegration in Laure‟s “Poems before the summer of 1936”
Colette Laure Lucienne Peignot, also known as Laure, also known
as Claude Araxe, lived from 1903-1938.i Her short life was drastically
affected by World War I, during which her father and three uncles died.ii
She grew up in an affluent neighborhood, Dammarie, which is too close
to Paris to be considered a rural French village. Her mother struggled to
keep up the house and gardens after the death of her husband in spite of
the bourgeois appearance of their lifestyle. By the time Laure reached
adulthood, however, she blatantly rejected her bourgeois background and
the Catholic faith, and she became avidly interested in leftist politics,
which replaced the bourgeois ideals she had grown up with. Her form of
social revolt was writing poetry and contributing to avant garde journals,
such as Contre-Attaque, La critique sociale, and the secret society journal
called Acéphale. Her leftist politics led her to become an active
communist for nine years. She studied the Russian language at the
prestigious École des Langues Orientales in Paris, and she briefly lived
in the Soviet Union in 1930.
Relatively little background information on Laure is available in
current scholarship. Most of what we know of Laure‟s personality comes
from her poems and political writings and the journals and letters of
several of her lovers, such as Jean Bernier, Soviet writer Boris Pil‟niak,
Boris Souvarine, the founder of the French Communist Party, and at the
end of her life, Georges Bataille. Jean Bernier, poet, novelist, journalist,
and political chronicalist, participated in and supported the communist
movement in France, and he inspired Laure‟s interest in revolutionary
ideals. Among his closest friends were Drieu La Rochelle, Boris
Souvarine, and Georges Bataille, all of whom were to cross paths with
Laure. Bernier‟s best friend, La Rochelle, was a close friend of the
Peignot family. Bernier met Laure at a dinner party in Garches in 1926,
when she was twenty-three. Subsequently, they met at various surrealist
expositions – one on March 26, and again at the premier gala for the
Ballets Russes on May 19, 1926 (Bernier 39-40). Thus, socially, Laure
moved within several literary and political circles of her day. She was
active in the latest artistic, literary, and political movements at a time
when, in France, the literary record shows very few women creating
verbal art.
Epiphany: Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, (2011) © Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
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When Laure died of tuberculosis at the early age of 35 in 1938,
she was living with Georges Bataille. He published the 1939 edition of Le
Sacré one year after her death, which stands as testimony to how much
he valued her as a thinker, writer, and poet. It was an underground
publication and the copies were distributed to Laure‟s friends. Further,
her great-nephew Jérome Peignot decided to publish Écrits de Laure in
1977, in which Bataille wrote an appendix to the edition explaining more
about Laure‟s personality, life, and writing. In the appendix, he alludes to
Laure‟s close friendship with Simone Weil after 1936, when Laure and
Weil had come out in strong support for the Spanish Civil War.
In the section of poetry entitled “Poems before the summer of
1936,” we encounter a number of poems written in free verse that reflect
the different aspects of the idea of the sacred within Laure‟s verse. For
Laure, the idea of the poetic sacred resides within the moment when the
eternal part of a human being becomes actualized via the realization that
the person is working toward achieving a goal while simultaneously the
person becomes aware of his/her own mortality. The first poem is seven
lines, in which the speaker finds him/herself being cannibalized by
friends:
De la fenêtre présente et invisible
je voyais tous mes amis
se partageant ma vie
en lambeaux
ils rongeait jusqu‟aux os
et ne voulant pas perdre un si beau morceau
se disputaient la carcasse
From this invisible window
I saw all my friends
Divide my life between them
In shreds
They gnawed to the bone
And not wanting to waste such a lovely piece
Fought over the carcassiii
Although the time frame of the poem is in the past tense, as indicated by
the verb voyais, which is in the past imperfect tense, the reader gets the
sense that the act of looking is prolonged into the present as an unfinished
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act. The window that the speaker is looking through is both present and
invisible, as is the nature of clear glass. This image can be interpreted as
a window into the speaker‟s mind. At first, the speaker states that its life
was being devoured. This is a metaphor for someone who overextended
him/herself in terms of obligations and duties. But the speaker then goes
on to describe how the cannibals divide this life between them, shred it,
and gnaw it to the bone. The inclusion of a physical body at this point
takes the connotation out of the realm of metaphor and posits it within the
realm of the real and the erotic. The cannibals are careful not to waste a
morsel of the body, and they fight over the carcass, which suggests that at
once they treated their meal as both sacred and taboo. Obviously, the
allusion to the Holy Eucharist debate comes through this poem. The
practice of ingesting the body and blood of Christ is also both
cannibalistic and sacred at the same time. The taboo is offset, however,
by the greediness of the cannibals who fight over the proverbial last
piece. This indicates that the taboo against cannibalism is somehow more
understandable than the sin of greed.
The next poem in the text, entitled “Prêtres” further illuminates
the speaker‟s relationship with piety. The speaker distrusts clerics as
duplicitous pontificators of piety. Laure used irregular rhyme and meter
to give “Prêtres” a spiritually defiant tone.
Prêtres, toutes sortes de prêtres et faux prêtres
Écoutez moi:
J‟ai dit “non” à la piété
et ma piété (au visage d‟Ange)
ma piété, votre aureole toute éndentée
a ricané
Priests, all sorts of priests and false priests
Listen to me:
I have said “no” to piety (with the face of an angel)
My piety, your toothless halo
Laughed
The speaker employs the imperative mood in the second line with a colon
“Listen to me:” This is intended to capture the attention of the speaker‟s
interlocutors. The interlocutors identified in the the first line are priests,
and especially “false priests.” The third line reveals that the speaker has
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rejected what organized religion calls piety in favor of the speakers own
brand of piety. The speaker‟s brand of piety, which according to the
speaker has the face of an angel, causes the “toothless halos” of
“listening” priests to laugh. This suggests that the speaker has
reinterpreted notions of piety and holiness and adopted those notions
instead of Christian doctrine. The “toothless halos” laughing at the
revised notions of piety suggest that the priest, as a spiritual advisor,
considers new ideas about personal faith caustically.
The speaker, however, manages to gain a balance of equality with
the priest when s/he states:
Elle s‟est brisée en mille morceaux
Maintenant seulement vient le temps de la sincérité
Celui où nous nous regardons en frères.
It broke into a thousand pieces
Only now the time for sincerity comes
When we look at each other as brothers.
The halo is broken into a thousand pieces, and the priest‟s powers to act
as an intermediary between a follower and God are rendered useless.
Hence, the priest is brought down to the earthbound plane. The speaker
suggests that only with a broken halo can someone understand the
serenity that comes from piety and look upon others as brothers.
The next two verse paragraphs depart from the first two. Verse
paragraph three is enclosed in quotation marks, as if the speaker is
remembering something someone said in the past. The speaker leaves the
priest behind as the speaker begins a journey by “taking the last boat”
which “reaches no land in the world.” This implies that the destination of
the boat does not exist on the physical, earthly plane.
“Tu prends le dernier bateau
Celui qui n‟aborde nulle part au monde.”
Alors j‟ai chargé ma vie sur mes épaules
Et suis partie le dos plus solide
Cette fois-là.
“You take the last boat
The one that reaches no land in the world”
So I loaded my life on my shoulders
And left, my back stronger
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This time.
The speaker lifts his/her life on its shoulders and leaves, but its back is
stronger. These paragraphs are a verse rendering of spiritual journey. In
order for one to begin such a journey, one must first question and break
what one has taken on blind faith in order to reach a new, different
perspective on the spirit and spirituality.
Combien de fois déjà
m‟avez-vous vue
embarquée pour la mort?
Au-delà d‟un soleil transgressé
la lune
à cheval
Sur des nuages en belier
me regardait
Comme une victoire ailée
How many times already
Have you seen me
Set off for death?
Beyond a transgressed doorstep
The moon
Straddling
On clouds like rams
Looked at me
Like winged victory.
When in the fifth verse paragraph the speaker asks, “How many times
have you seen me set off for death?” it reinforces the idea that
questioning and breaking with traditional notions of piety is a form of
death that allows one to go on to a different level of understanding and
learning. As the speaker leaves the “transgressed doorstep” s/he looks up
and sees the moon “straddling clouds like rams” looking like “winged
victory.” The symbol of the ram signifies the creative impulse of the
spirit at the moment of its inception (Cirlot 18). The symbol of the moon
with regard to spiritual journey connotes the different stages of learning
and discovery. It also implies that the journey will begin again within a
period of time. This suggests that the journey is never “over” but that it
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renews itself on a regular basis and that the individual will continue to
change and grow, and ultimately become victorious in its efforts.
The next poem of Laure‟s is an intricately designed poem in terms
of Symbolism. The title is simply “8” and in the 1939 edition of Le Sacré
it is printed in bold face type and it appears on the left hand side of the
page. Readers often overlook this title because it does not look like a
traditional title of a poem. But, of all Laure‟s poems, it is the most
important title because it adroitly addresses the nature of life as routine. It
helps to imagine that, pen in hand, the speaker (and the reader) draws the
number eight over and over without lifting the pen from the surface of the
paper. The “doodle” of the eight becomes bolder with the passage of the
pen over and over, and slightly sloppy as the hand tries to trace the shape
of the eight over itself. This exercise illustrates the ideas contained in
Laure‟s poem “8.” The verse paragraphs of this poem are highly irregular
with very short paragraphs combined with longer ones, and ends with a
line taken from the newspapers. In the first verse paragraph, the speaker
is identified as femine on a grammatical level in the first line, “je me suis
retrouvée” (I found myself). The reflexive pronominal verb in the past
tense is conjugated with the ending “ée,” which indicates that the direct
object of the verb “me” (and therefore the “I” of the statement subject) is
of feminine gender. The ideas conveyed are about quotidian ruts.
Je me suis retrovée
Toute enfermée
Comme en un cercle
Auquel j‟échappe
Par cet autre
Qui m‟y ramène
I found myself
Trapped
As in a circle
Which I escape
By this other
Which brings me back.
The first verse paragraph is heavily rhymed and irregular in meter. Line
one contains six syllables, lines two, five, and six contain three syllables,
line three contains five syllables, and line four contains four syllables.
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The rhyme of the first four lines is in “aabb” and lines five and six are
rhymed “cd.” Lines five and six suggest that the speaker is attempting to
free itself from “the circle” that traps it.
In the second verse paragraph, the speaker produces a litany of all
the ways she has tried to escape the routine of life. The lines have a
monotonous tone to them as the speaker explains that, no matter what she
tries, the “game” of eight is infinite.
Gestes hiératiques, grimaces ignoble allaient se mêler, se confondre,
S‟exclure, s‟affirmer doublement…pour s‟anéantir.. Et ce “jeu” – là dura
longtemps
J‟ai cru monter au ciel (sans rire) au moment meme où la vie refermait
sur
Moi son couvercle de plomb.
J‟ai joué de toutes les contradictions inherent à ma nature en vivant
„pour être vrai‟ tout ce qu‟on porte en soi „jusqu‟au bout.‟
Je me suis disperse aux quatre vents avec la certitude orgueilleuse de me
Retrouver toujours au zenith et puis je suis tombée vide, perdue, mutilée
des
Quatre members.
Je m‟en allais sur des routes élevées, sur des chemins tout escarpés, sur
Des rochers survolés d‟aigles…
Heiratic gestures, vile grimaces mix, merge, disappear, reemerge…then
Vanish entirely. And this „game‟ will go on a long time.
I thought I was going to heaven (joking aside) just as life again placed its
Heavy lid over me.
I used all my inherent contradictions living „to be true‟ all that one carries
Within „to the end.‟
I scattered myself to the four winds with the proud certainty of always
Finding myself at the zenith and then I fell empty, lost, four limbs
mutilated.
I went away over high roads, steep paths, rocks flown over by eagles…
The first line of this paragraph contains a meter that is analogous to the
“doodle” of the number eight on a paper as the gestures and grimaces
“mix, merge, disappear, reemerge…then vanish entirely.” The speaker
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states that she thought she was going to heaven and in parentheses states
(sans rire) – which means “joking aside.” This implies that the speaker of
the poem has a true belief in heaven. But instead of going to heaven, life
“again placed its heavy lid over me,” despite the speaker‟s attempt to
“play the game” by adhering to the confines of the repetitive, interloping
circles of the eight. She believes in the promise of heaven if she plays the
game of life by the rules, but life itself will not let her out of the game.
She continues to explain that she lives “to be true” due to the “inherent
contradictions” and “all that one carries within „to the end.‟” Thus, the
speaker endeavors to persevere with all of the knowledge she has gained
within life. The speaker then states, “I have scattered myself to the four
winds with the proud certainty of always finding myself at the zenith and
then I fell empty, lost, four limbs mutilated.” This line is replete with
Symbolist themes of the pinnacle of understanding represented by the
zenith, the idea of self-mutilation required to reach the ideal, and the
image of the body falling through space. It also carries with it the idea of
“throwing oneself into one‟s work,” only to be consumed by the work
and losing the sense of self-totality. The only conclusion to this
“scattered falling” would be to continue the journey in an attempt to
reconstitute the self. Hence, the last line of the verse paragraph, “I went
away over high roads, steep paths, rocks flown over by eagles…”
suggests that the speaker, because of the experience, is between the
earthbound and the spiritual planes of existence. Nevertheless, the
“infernal 8” still holds the speaker in the game. The line “Le 8 infernal
revint me prendre au lasso”/ “The infernal 8 came back to lasso me” is
separated by a caesura from the second and fourth verse paragraphs of
the text in the 1939 edition, which reinforces the idea that, although the
speaker tries to escape the confines of the eight, it comes back to lasso
her not matter what she does.
In the fourth verse paragraph, the rhyme and meter describe again
the lasso of the eight. Additionally, the speaker is physically present
within the confines of the eight. She “climbs,” “drifts,” “jumps,” “falls,”
and “remains in the middle” of the game. She states, “my face is there”
and then goes on to compare the experience with the creepy, slithery,
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earthy animals (eel, dolphin, earthworm) that are elongated and glide
through their habitats.
Je rampe le long de ses contours
Je vogue dans ses meanders
Je sauté hors du cercle
Et retombe dans l‟autre
Je reste étranglée au milieu
Mon visage est là
Figé anguille
dauphin
ver de terre
Et qui donc, voyant ce signe fatal
Songerait à m‟y découvrir
Voudrait m‟en deliverer?
“Un prisonnier s‟évade en sautant le mur à l‟éndroit meme
où il devait être
Execute.” (Les journaux)
8 Mai
I climb along its contours,
I drift in its meanderings
I jump out of the circle
And fall back into the other
I remain in strangled in the middle
My face is there
Frozen
eel
dolphin
earthworm
And who, seeing this fateful sign
Would think of discovering me there,
Would want to release me?
“A prisoner escaped by jumping the wall at the very place
he was to be
Executed.” (The newspapers)
8 May
The speaker cannot believe that anyone would think to look for her
within this monotonous world, and if they did, they would not want to
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release her from it. The poem ends with a line from the newspapers. I
contend that this line offers a solution to the problem of being trapped in
the eight. The idea of a prisoner escaping over the very wall he was to be
executed in front of offers insight to the idea that the threat of certain
death can be used as a springboard into change, and ultimately, it is used
in the poem to escape from the lasso of the eight.
The next poem in Le Sacré has no title and consists of two verse
paragraphs. Social binary oppositions are addressed in relation to the
different roles assigned by others and for others in any community.
Archange ou putain
Je veux bien
Tous les roles
Me sont prêtés
La vie jamais reconnue
La simple vie
Que je cherche encore
Elle gît
Tout au fond de moi
Leur péché a tué
Toute pureté
Archangel or whore
I don‟t mind
All the roles
Are lent to me
The life never recognized
The simple life
That I am still looking for
Is lying
In the very depths of me
Their sin has killed
All purity.
The opposition of archangel and whore in the first line resounds
throughout the first verse paragraph starkly pointing out the different
views one could have of the speaker. It also posits the speaker in either a
masculine or feminine role – the archangels are all masculine entities, but
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the name “whore” is reserved for the feminine. The speaker states that it
does not care which name is used due to “all the roles are lent to me” and
life is never recognized. The second verse paragraph revisits the idea of
the journey that is so prevalent in Laure‟s poetry as the speaker states that
it is still looking for a simple life that resides within the speaker herself.
The last two lines of the poem in the 1939 edition of Le Sacré appear as
they are represented here – like steps leading downward. The idea that
“their sin has killed all purity” places the impetus back on a social level
rather than on the individual level expressed in the first four lines of the
second verse paragraph. The idea of “purity” mentioned in the last line of
the poem brings the reader back to the first word of the poem
“archangel.” This implies that the poem can be read rhythmically as a
“circular” poem – when the reader reaches the end of the poem, he or she
is put back at the beginning of the poem to read it again. This effect
shows that the speaker of the poem is again caught in a circular pattern
demonstrating the effort to live within the roles society assigns, and the
inability of the speaker to extricate from it.
The last poem in Le Sacré to be discussed here is entitled “Le
Corbeau.” The word corbeau in French can have different meanings.
First, it means crow or raven. It can also be a pejorative term for a priest.
This poem is dated 1936 in the 1939 edition of Le Sacré and
unquestionably establishes Laure‟s ties to the secret society called
Acéphale. Although Georges Bataille claims to have created Acéphale,
Michel Leiris suggests that Laure was the inspiration behind the idea for
the secret society and the journal. In the poem, a forest is mentioned that
bears remarkable resemblance to the forest where Acéphale meetings
took place. There is a forest near Saint-Germain-en-Laye where Bataille
and Laure lived. Jérome Peignot (1977) states that there was a note
describing the rule of Acéphale meetings found among Laure‟s papers
after she died, the Yveline forest is mentioned (p.99). “Le Corbeau is the
longest of all the poems in the 1939 edition except for the prose version
of “Le Sacré.” It contains eight stanzas of irregular meter and rhyme. The
theme of the journey is present in the poem, as it is in many of Laure‟s
poetic works.
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C‟était dans la forêt
le silence et le secret
d‟une étoile à multiples rayons.
Loin, à l‟orée du bois
dans cette allée
que des arbres bas
couvrent en arceau
un enfant passa
perdu
effrayé, émerveillé de me voir
comme je l‟apercevais lui-même
tout enchase dans une sphere à flacons de neige.
The allusions to Acéphale are also present as the journey unfolds. The
speaker becomes lost in a “silent” and “secret” forest. The image of the
“many rayed star” in the first verse paragraph represents light and
knowledge. The presence of the male child in the first paragraph
symbolizes the future, and this image counters the image of the old man,
which signifies the past. The “frightened” and “astonished” aspect of the
child‟s countenance suggests that the speaker trespasses on the child‟s
privacy. The “sphere of snowflakes” which “encase” the child illustrate
that the child lives in a field of austere purity.
In the second verse paragraph, “whirlwinds” approach them “as if
to deceive.” According to C. G. Jung (1967), wind is often used as a
powerful symbol of the active and violent aspects of air and it signifies
creative breath or exhalation (p. 31).
Les tourbillions nous rapprochaient
comme pour se jouer de lui et de moi
Un soleil violet, hors d‟usage
Et des lueurs d‟orage
Nous glaçaient d‟épouvant.
Les fees et les ogres se disputant décidément
notre commune angoisse
voulurent que la foudre déchirât
non loin de là
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un grand arbre
qui s‟ouvrit
comme un ventre.
Je brami.
L‟enfant, jambs nues zébrées de froid et capuchin
bien reel (à tordre)
rouvrit les yeux.
A ma vue, il s‟enfuit.
The “violent inactive sun” is an antithesis of the usual symbolism of the
sun – instead of representing light, knowledge, and warmth, the sun in
this verse paragraph takes on a eerie, impotent nature. It goes without
saying that Laure‟s conscious choice to bring this image of the sun into
the poem demonstrates a departure from traditional Symbolism in favor
of an opposite illustration. At the sight of this sun, the speaker and the
child are frozen in terror as the whirlwinds whip around them. As they
look around, they see fairies and ogres “disputing our shared anguish.”
Fairies are personifications of the stages in the development of spiritual
life or in the „soul‟ of landscapes. The folklore of ogres goes back to
Saturn, who would devour his children as soon as Cybele gave them
birth. The significance of ogres demonstrates that destruction is the
inevitable outcome of creation. Ogres and fairies are most often included
in “forest folklore,” and they are rarely seen acting together as they do in
this poem. The ogres and fairies work together to uproot a huge tree with
magic lightening. The tree “opened like a stomach” from the lightening
strike, which indicates fertility and the birth of creation. The speaker and
the child, braving the tempest, are emotionally and physically affected by
the violence and cold. The child “reopens” his eyes as he wrings a cowl,
which is a monk‟s hood, sees the speaker, and abruptly runs away.
The speaker, alone now in the forest, gives up on following the
child and “picks a strange destiny out of the rut.” This line reminds the
reader of the earlier poem “8,” in which the speaker tries to escape the rut
of life. The speaker also elects not to dwell on the incident with the child
as it turns and goes back “as though nothing had happened.” As the
speaker makes its way through the forest, the crow (“l‟oiseau aux ailes
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noires” – “the bird with black wings”) tapes the reader on the shoulder.
The symbolism of the crow is huge. According to J.E. Cirlot (2002),
Native Americans believe the crow is the great civilizer and the creator of
the visible world (71). For the Celts and Germanic tribes, crows have
mystic powers. In Siberia, the crow‟s caw is used as a special part in rites
of divination. In Christian symbolism, the crow represents an allegory of
solitude. Cirlot (2002) also points out that, in China, the crow is the first
of the imperial emblems and represents the Yang, or the active life of the
Emperor (72). Sometimes crows are featured with three legs, which
correspond to the sun-symbolism of the tripod (first light, midday sun,
sunset). A. Beaumont (1949) states in his book Symbolism in Decorative
Chinese Art that the crow signifies the isolation of a person or entity who
lives on a superior plane. Because of its black color, the crow is
associated with the idea of beginning (as expressed in such symbols as
the maternal night, primordial darkness, the fertilized Earth, and death).
Because it is also associated with the atmosphere, it is a symbol for
creative, demiurgic power and spiritual strength. Because of its flight, it
is considered a messenger. The speaker takes solace in its new
companionship and “wants [the crow] to accompany” the speaker
“everywhere and always to precede me/like a herald his knight.” Thus the
image of the crow illustrates creative power, strength, solitude,
companionship, and protection.
The third and fourth verse paragraphs are concerned with loss and
spiritual architecture. Paragraph three finds the speaker even more lost in
the woods “stumbling against rocks” and “slipping on dead leaves.” As
the speaker makes its precarious way, it comes upon an abandoned house
with a “smashed in doorway.”
Renonçant à le poursuivre
ramassant dans l‟ornière un étrange destin
somme toute fort logique
je rebroussai mon chemin
“comme si de rien n‟était”
mais je sentais à mon épaule
ce frôlement lourd et discret
de l‟oiseau aux ailes noires
et le considérant avec douceur
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j‟eusse voulu que partout il m‟accompagnât et
toujours me précédât
comme un chevalier son héraut.
De plus en plus perdue
heurtant les pierres
glissant sur les feuilles mortes
m‟enlisant dans la vase d‟un étang
j‟arrivai à une maison abandonee
un puits de mousse et vert de gris
un seuil défoncé
j‟entrai.
The house is obviously very old, moldy, and rotten. The front doorway is
smashed leaving a gaping hole at the front of the house. The door is a
feminine symbol that contains all the implications of the symbolic hole,
since it is a door that gives access to the hole. Its significance is the
antithesis of the wall. Also implied is the idea of a temple door, which
has a relationship with the altar as between the circumference and the
center; that is to state that even though, in each case, the two component
elements are the farthest apart, they are, nonetheless, in a way, the closest
since they reflect one another. Consider that this idea is not unlike the
architectural ornamentation of cathedrals, where the façade is nearly
always treated as if it were a part of the altar. Often the reliefs on the
façade reflect or are conversant with the reliefs on the altar. The speaker
enters the house, “pushes open doors without hinges,” and “opening
windows without panes/as though I needed air.” The suffocating
experience of the house is a journey unto itself.
The fifth and sixth verse paragraphs continue the journey as the
speaker “climbs a ridiculous staircase” and sees that the walls are covered
with writing. The writing accounts for the sins of the speaker‟s life and
asks, “what right did they have? The right of the poor.”
Le papier à fleurs et moisi
ondulait par vagues
vers un plancher pourri
une cheminée béante
exhibait les traces encore intactes d‟un feu éteint
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cendres, tibias calcinés de frênes et de bouleaux.
je poussais des portes sans gonds
dont la chute me terrifiait
j‟ouvrais des fenêtres sans carreaux
comme si l‟air me manquait.
Enfin je montai un escalier dérosoire.
Les murs, couverts de graffitis étrange, inconnus.
Jamais vus
Mettait ma vie à nu
Avec mon nom en toutes letters mêlés à des crimes:
“et de quell droit?
du droit des pauvres.” [sic]
As the speaker contemplates the crimes of life, the crow returns to it
“with its cry/to thrash the living with its beak/to dismember the dead.”
These lines lend the crow a vulture-like aspect as the crow “elects a
prey.” The implication here is that the speaker would be the prey of the
crow. As the speaker undertakes the journey and meets the crow, the
speaker is amazed by its natural beauty and highly symbolic status within
culture. But, as the speaker must face and answer for its crimes, the crow
returns as an agent of death still true to its natural instincts.
The seventh verse paragraph finds the speaker magically
transported from the house back to the forest. The forest “envelops” the
speaker in a “halo of moon” and “rocks” the speaker in a “white, shifting,
icy mist.”
Dans ce grenier souillé
l‟oiseau me rejoin
de son cri
pour fouailler les vivants
de son bec
pour dépecer les morts
l‟ombre noire projetée sur moi
semblait élire une proie
La nuit m‟a trouvée
Étranglée au fond du bois
Elle m‟a enveloppée d‟un halo de lune
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B. Brown
Et bercée dans la brume
une brume blanche, mouvante et givrée:
“Je connais ton étoile
Va et suis-la
Cet être sans nom
Renié tour à tour
Par la nuit et le jour
Ne peut rien contre toi
Et ne te ressemble pas
Crois-moi
Lorsque demain à l‟aube
Ta tête sera jetée
Au panier des guillotines
Souviens-toi
Assassin
Que toi seul
As bu à mon sein
“tout le lait de lat tendresse humaine.” [sic]
The image of the forest cradling the speaker and rocker her signifies the
maternal aspect of nature. The speaker is returned to the natural world,
supposedly having faced the crimes of life. The speaker is no less lost
than at the beginning of the poem, which suggests that, although crimes
are paid for and forgiveness has been granted, the journey is far from
over. The forest is endowed with a voice for the first time in the last
several lines of the poem: “I know your star/to and follow it/This
nameless being/renounced in turn/by night and day/can do nothing
against you/and does not resemble you.” The forest grants the speaker
leave to continue the journey and conveys that the speaker should have
nothing to worry about from the “nameless being that renounced the
speaker. The nameless being is the crow. The forest continues to speak,
stating, “believe me/When tomorrow at dawn/your head is thrown/into
the basket of the guillotined/remember/Murder/that you alone/have drunk
/‟all the milk of human kindness from my breast.‟” These last few lines
reinforce the feminine gender of “mother nature” as the parent imparting
the sentence of death to one of her children. The least of the speaker‟s
worries would be the “nameless being” of the crow. The forest explains
to the speaker (and reader) what the crimes written on the walls of the
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B. Brown
house were and calls the speaker a murderer. The idea that the forest tells
the speaker that death by guillotine is the sentence for this offense
reiterates the idea that murder is not only a social taboo, but it is also an
offense against nature itself.
Although not much is known about the exact interests of
Acéphale since it was a secret society, certain rules for participation are
reprinted in Jérome Peignot‟s (1977) Écrits de Laure. They were found
among her papers after her death. In volume two of Georges Bataille‟s
Oeuvres Complétes (1970), the rules are also reproduced. The rules
themselves explain when, where, and how to prepare oneself for
attendance at a meeting of the secret society. For example, rule one states
that one should “only enter the part of the Yveline forest that used to be
called „fore Cruye‟ under conditions that exclude any possibility of
conflict with the character of sanctuary this area will have for you.” This
is to state that, at the least, one should enter into the forest with a clear
conscience. Rule two states that members are not allowed to enter into
the “restricted sanctuary to be determined later except during Acéphale
meetings. Rule three commands that members cannot say anything to
anyone about the meetings unless it is absolutely necessary “as the
absolute need for them becomes apparent and only after this is
determined.” Rule four states that the things discussed will only be
documented in a secret, internal Journal of Acéphale, and that only those
who accept and conform to the rules will be privy to the journal. Rule
five states that members must “observe all restrictions specific to each
meeting” and entreats them not to speak, meet with others, or wander off
in the forest without specific instruction. There is also a strange reference
to “not opening envelopes until the appointed time” in this rule. Rule six
states that these rules can be changed later. Rule seven states that those
who organize the meetings when necessary will lift the rules. Laure‟s list
goes on to indicate that all involved must agree on the boundaries for the
forest‟s restricted area, and that members will go to this area in groups no
larger than two. Another point included involves the use of sulphur. It
reads:
Sulphur is a substance that comes from the Earth‟s interior
and is issued only from the mouths of volcanoes. This is
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clearly in relation to the chthonic character of the mythic
reality that we are pursuing. It is also significant that the
roots of a tree plunge deep into the Earth.
According to René Alleau (1986), sulphur connotes a more profound
purification, reason, and intuition, the male principle, and transcendence
(p. 196). The nature of the Acéphale rules indicate that the secret society
wanted to recreate a form of ritual heavily based in traditional
symbolism.
Far from being an exhaustive discussion of Laure‟s contributions
to the Symbolist movement, this examination engages her ideas and texts
on a level of explication and inclusion within the discourse of European
Symbolist writers. I seek to bring together the original threads of research
intended to posit Laure among France‟s best known writers and thinkers
in the early part of the twentieth century. While conducting research for
this topic, I found it incredibly difficult to find a woman Symbolist poet
in the French literary tradition writing between 1880-1930. When I
discovered her work, I put together the pieces of her biography based
upon correspondence and journals of her lovers, because very little
information on her life and poetry is available in current scholarship. At
first, I believed this lack of information to be a symptom of her leftist
politics and nine year alliance with communism. While that might be true
to a degree, I discovered that her family was just as much against
publication of her works and personal papers as anyone. The fact that
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris were responsible for the posthumous
publication of Le Sacré illustrates that, not only did they consider Laure‟s
poetry and poetics to be important contributions to the literary fashions of
the day, but also that Bataille in particular is her theoretical counterpart.
Jérome Peignot, her great-nephew and a poet in his own right, edited the
1977 edition of Écrits de Laure much to the chagrin and against the
wishes of the rest of his family. Obviously, the emotional reaction of the
family to Laure‟s life, lifestyle, and writing almost forty years after her
death still ran very deep.
Working with the French language in terms of symbol and gender
is slightly more difficult than working with them in any other language,
particularly Russian. Laure‟s choices, however, bespeak a similar effort
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B. Brown
to avoid social gender assignments either by using verb tenses that do not
necessarily betray the gender of the speaker, or by tackling the gender
assignments head on and giving her speakers feminine genders. When
Laure chooses the latter of the two, the speaker often addresses the very
nature of social gender assignment by offering binary oppositions of
social feminine roles. Laure also reconfigures traditional symbols to the
inverse of their meaning in order to contest the world she attempts to
change, but nevertheless must live in.
References
Alleau, R., Huginus, A. B. and Eugène, C. (1986). Aspects de l’alchemie
traditionelle. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Bataille, G. (1970). Oeuvres completes. Vol. 6. Paris: Gallimard.
Beaumont, A. (1949). Symbolism in decorative Chinese art. New York.
Cirlot, J. E. (2002). A dictionary of symbols. Second Edition. Trans. Jack
Sage. New York: Routledge.
Jung, C. G. (1967). Collected works. Vol. 5. Trans. R.F.C. Hull.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Laure. (1939). Le Sacré suivi de Poémes et de Divers écrits. Eds.
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris. éParis: Hors Commerce.
Peignot, Jérome et le collectif Change. (1977). Écrits de Laure. Paris:
Société Nouvelle des Éditions Pauvert.
i
Colette Peignot preferred to be called simply Laure at the end of her life. When
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris decided to publish L’histoire d’une petite file and Le
Sacré in 1939, they published the works under this preferred nom de plume. She used a
different nom de plume, Claude Araxe, in 1933-1934, when she wrote for the journal La
Critique Sociale. The name Araxe comes from a large river in Armenia known for its
unpredictable, unstable riverbed and the inability to build a bridge over it.
ii
The street in Paris named Quatre frères was named in honor of the Peignot brothers
who died during World War I.
iii
All translations of all poems reproduced in this article are mine.
[166]

Poetics of Disintegration in Laure`s “Poems before the

Transcription

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